This is Your Captain Speaking

Starting All Over

By John W. Loftus

Last month I wrote about a shot I made o­n the 8 ball. I got to wondering how many of us miss the 8 ball (or 9 ball) shot when it counts and how to correct it. Even a few of the best players I know have missed straight-in 8 ball shots. I know a shooter who will run down to the 8 ball with ease and then miss that shot almost 30% of the time, depending o­n its difficulty.

Now, it might be possible that we miss the 8 ball as often as we miss any other shot. We merely remember missing it more often. But from my experience, I just don't think so. We have trouble with pressure shots. These are shots that if we make them, we know the game is over, and it might be two or three shots before the 8 ball. But we can't practice these shots, because they arise during an important match.

I think our problem is that o­n pressure shots, we tend to think different thoughts and do different things. That's why we miss them. o­n o­ne extreme, we think to ourselves, "I gotta make this shot. I'd better not miss this o­ne." o­n the other extreme, we ease up and think the game is as good as over before we shoot. We either excessively worry about the shot, or we take it for granted, and consequently we do different things with our routines and our strokes.

The best suggestion I know of to help us o­n pressure shots is to treat them the same as any other shot. This is easier said than done, but o­ne way to help us is to adopt the advice of my wife Gwen. It's this: Start all over. Let me explain.

When we first get a chance at the table after the balls have been broken, what do we do? We survey it. We look for a particular sequence of shots that is the best for our skills. Sometimes this initial surveying will take a while, but after that initial surveying, we tend to do less and less of it after each subsequent shot as we proceed to run out. But think about this. In 8 ball it gets harder and harder to run out with each successive shot, primarily because we have fewer balls o­n the table, and our opponent has obstructing balls we must navigate around. But with each successive shot, we tend to take less time thinking about how we will navigate around the table. We ease up as we go when we should give successive shots more thought.

How can we correct this? Adopt Gwen's advice. Start all over after each shot. Consider it a new game with each successive shot. After all, it's a new table. This won't always require the same thinking time, but sometimes it might. If you do this with each shot, you won't be doing anything differently when you're o­n the pressure shot, and you might even have a better leave o­n that shot than if you had rushed through your shots.

When you're o­n the 8 ball, consider it the start of a new game, not the end. I had a friend who broke a rack and nothing fell in. He looked at it and challenged me with a bet to run out all of my solids, sink the 8 ball, and then run out all of the stripes. It wasn't a hard rack to run, since he busted them up well. But when I was o­n the 8 ball, it was no longer the money ball. When I was o­n it, I was thinking of the shape I needed for my next shot. I treated it as if it were just like any other shot. And I ran the whole rack of balls.

When you are o­n the 8 ball, consider doing the same thing. It's the start of a new game. Get shape o­n another ball and consider how you're going to run out all of those balls too. If it's the o­nly ball left o­n the table, get shape o­n an imaginary ball.

Okay now. Let's begin … again … and again … and again.

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